(Sharon Kirkey/ National Post) — Israeli neuroscientist Alon Chen can change the mood, the “mental state” of an animal. “We can make a mouse more or less anxious, more or less depressed-like, by changing the activity of specific brain areas or nerve cells,” says Chen, president of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
COVID has also manipulated human brains, not as much through any direct effects of the virus, but, Chen suspects, through the emotional toll three years of living with the pathogen has taken. Chen was in Toronto recently to raise awareness and philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute, where scientists recently succeeded in growing synthetic mouse embryos using stem cells taken from skin, and not eggs and sperm.
In an interview with the National Post’s Sharon Kirkey, Chen talked about why the human brain remains an enigma, what happens to our brains when exposed to a chronic stressor like COVID and why the need for better treatments for anxiety and depression is “immense.” His comments have been edited for length and clarity. (…)